Topic:
I love this age of the PC and internet

I love this age of the PC and internet

As a kid, I loved to watch live action or cartoons of certain DC and Marvel charactors even though I never read comics. Some of these heros were Batman (Adam West), Spiderman, Yulk, Superman and Wonder Woman (Lynda Carter). During the 80s I have tried to read comics but because I was born visually impaired and had difficult in reading comics. The only way for me to read any comics were to use 2 visual aids.
One of the visual aids was basically a pair of glasses which had couple of magnifiers suck on the lenses. This helped me to read small print and the other visual aid is basically a monocular (small telescope). The problem was that if I stopped reading and then I would lose my place and had problems in knowing which panel to read, espeically if I use the monocular And this is why I don't read comics, which is a shame.
My favourite male comic book charactor is Batman, although I consider the Tim Burton Batman films the best and Micheal Keaton is the best live action Batman and love the TAS (The Animated Series), the Justice Leage and Justice League Unlimited cartoons andmy favourite female charactor is Wonder Woman. This is espcially because of the Lynda Carter live action series.
But now I can read comics. I can do this via the computer and internet. How you may ask? Simple. The computers nowadays have various applications that can help people with hearing and visually impairments. For me personally I use the magnifier which helps to zoom in and out whatever is on the screen, which makes it easy for me to see and read stuff, like for an example comics.
I have already read part of Guyver a Japanese Manga comic and now have found a website, http://readcomiconline.to/Comic/Wonder-Woman-1942, to read Wonder Woman comics or any others that I might be interested. Yes having a computer and access to the internet could be dangerous, for an example, hackers who may steal your ID, passwords, credit cart details, etc. But it can useful to find be useful if you are visually impaired/blind when you want to read comics and couldn't to it before the invention of PCs and internet.

Untitled title

How fascinating, I was wondering about this very topic weeks ago when we first talked. I didn't know how you could manage, and was a bit shy to ask! :)

Although computers and the internet have their dangers they are also such fantastic tools, I can't get the chauvinism that often is shown towards technology (although I live like a luddite for many things, I am not a gadget maniac). I am not into comics, but I love to write and play around with digital pictures. I'd be lost without my laptop. :)

Untitled title

I'm so old that Clockwork Orange and 1984 seem like ancient history! LOL I've seen the evolution of technology first hand working with IBM 360s for massive batching of data to create phone bills in NYC in the early 70s. This led to electronic switching which replaced enormous mechanical switches. Ultimately, they were able to miniaturize the processors and chips to where growth was exponential in terms of speed and capacity and this happened, it seemed, about every two or three months.

We all know what today's devices are capable of and I had a growing fear over the years that humans would become so dependent on technology that it would one day render us "irrelevant" in both the workplace and in nature's "food chain". With today's advent of AI (artificial intelligence) being as sophisitcated as it is, and with continued exponential growth in that field to where now massive computers are teaching themselves, we just might one day see scenarios play out similar to "Hal" the computer in Stanley Kubrick's "2001 Space Odyssey" written by a very futuristic Arthur Clarke and released in 1968. OMG, if you haven't seen this brilliant piece, it is one of the all time classics where it becomes "man vs. machine" or basically, AI gone wild! That was 49 years ago and so resembles things evolving today!!!

A side note was many who went to watch this movie dropped LSD beforehand for the imagery, art, music, and story line were mind blowing!!! We'd all go back to discuss the meaning of what we just witnessed for hours fueled by the effects of this psychedlic hallucinagen. But one does not need drugs to appreciate this wonderful masterpiece...and truly, the more you watch it, the more real it gets!!!

Oh, I went as "Wonder Woman" to more than one Halloween party back in the day!!! I soooo wanted to be her! (grin)

Untitled title

Kubrick... saw most of his movies, but nothing, Kubrick and I don't get along. Fell asleep 3 times during The Shining, suffered through 2001 to the end, but gosh, it cost me! lol I thought I should like Eyes Wide Shut, hell there was Tom Cruise and Venetian masks, it should be easy on the eyes at least, I thought, but no, just not my cup of tea. There is something about Kubrick and flogging a scene to death....

As AI gone rebel go I prefer the Matrix, or even Battlestar Galactica. Hell, Number Six can mistreat me any time she wants :-)

Untitled title

LOL Crissie!!!

Katia, Kubrick will test your "intellect" always, or so say the numerous "pseudointellects" wandering the planet. It is what it is...you know what you're going to get. He is/was genious in his own way. I truly think "2001" was brilliant considering when it was made and the subject matter he worked with. Eyes Wide Shut was really "out there" and it was like watching a train wreck in that you cannot take your eyes off of it regardless of how slow or disturbing the scenes. Then of coure, you could always close them and catch up on needed sleep! LOL

Untitled title

AAh but the main issue with AI is it cannot make the intuiative leaps that a person can at the moment it would still go through a,b,c,d etc. but a person if they saw the pattern could be a,c,e,h etc.. You only have to look at the issues with driverless cars to also see that AI still has a ways to go & even today with coding a computer wants everything in a specific order where as a person as long as it works you are fine with it. Just my 2 penneth's worth.

Ideally if you are looking for a comic strip to look through then Misfile would be the 1 I'd recommend. It is about a young man that due to a filing error by angels in heaven wakes up one morning but is a girl who has her male memories & likes but is in a grils body.

____________________________________

The path of the enlightened one leaves no track-it is just like the path of birds in the sky.

Untitled title

Matt, I agree with you 100%. But if you follow developments in the field, you're seeing that people are working to develop that "intuativeness" necessary to rival humans. It just takes immense processing and storage power and speed. New technologies in the chip field are giving those developers hope that they are much, musch closer than ever before to achieving this.

Untitled title

Yes, I agree with you Tracy, the development of computers is itself developing so fast, it is hard to predict what may happen in the next few years.

Kubrick, lol, I suppose it's a flaw of my intellect that I find him so tiring? a couple of years ago some friends offered to introduce me to his wife (she has a holiday home in our village), and I politely declined.... can you imagine the awkward conversations, ".....sorry madam, but your husbansd's work regularly puts me to sleep, he might as well have been called Stanley Valium for all he ever did for me...." I don't know, I am not very suited to society I guess, lol.

No I understand how visionary and unique his work is (or at least some of it), but it's just not my brand of visionary.

Untitled title

Yes, computers are very capable in certain areas and can outperform humans. But at present, they are used as a tool by humans in a similar manner as a hammer is used to drive nails. After all, a hammer easily outperforms a human in this particular task. The same is true of using a vessel such as a cup to hold water; it works a lot better than cupping your hands together. However, a computer is different in that its functionality intrudes into the thinking arena, or at least what I call pseudo-thinking. Will it surpass human intelligence? Perhaps--after all, human brains are required to fit within our skulls, wherea computers can be made much larger. However, there is one essential quality of the human pyche that may be hard to synthesize with a machine: motivation.

Untitled title

Katia V said:How fascinating, I was wondering about this very topic weeks ago when we first talked. I didn't know how you could manage, and was a bit shy to ask! :) Although computers and the internet have their dangers they are also such fantastic tools, I can't get the chauvinism that often is shown towards technology (although I live like a luddite for many things, I am not a gadget maniac). I am not into comics, but I love to write and play around with digital pictures. I'd be lost without my laptop. :)
Thanks Katia.
The computers in the 80s and even the 90s were useless for me as I couldn't read what was on the screen unless the monitor is almost the size as the one I have now. At school I hated using the somputers as I had to use one or another visual aid to help me read what was on the screen and even then I still had problems as the letters and numbers were still difficult to read and was giving me headaches just loking at the screen.
At the Royal National College for the Blind in Hereford in Britain, I discovered software which made it easier to read, not only on the swcreen but different colours. Some people have different conditions and had to use different colours for foreground and background, for an example blue on green. White on black was sxomething I was use to and had problems reading. On my first time on the interent in the 2000s there was a way to change the size of the screen which actually helped but was a bit of a pain to size down to watch videos or see pictures. But it was better than the 80s and 90s though.
Now with this compute rand my preivous computer, I find it easier as today computers have a section for people with hearing or visually impairements as I have said. I will take a picture of what the magnifer size is so you have some idea of what I am talking about. When I first discovered this site, I also discovered the magaizine, Frock and used the magnifying application and I actually could read it. Had to get use to zooming in and out to turn the pages or to have a look at the pictures but that was alright and very easy to do. That's how come I know I can read comics and online publications like Frock.

Untitled title

Ah! Saw the picture! While nowhere near blind I am fantastically shortsighted so I always magnify stuff on screen to between 110 and 130%. It makes things definitely more comfortable for me, especially when I am writing long stuff in Microsoft Word! Else I eventually find myself with my nose on the screen and a stiff back.

It's great you found a way to work this magic in a handy way; sometimes even if computers have the right tools they can be too clunky for effective use ... My old netbook was a clever little chap, but not very handy in that regard. My current laptop allows you to zoom in and out with one move on the touch pad, which is great, but, go figure, it only works for some programs, not all. And sometimes it works arsy-versy and the move for zoom-in makes you zoom out which tends to cause explosive "language" events, ahem. :)